Directions Test
The following test is another old activity but can be effective if the students haven’t seen it yet. Give this test to the students and see how many of them read all the instructions first.
- Read everything before doing anything, then work as quickly as possible.
- Put your name in the upper right-hand corner of the paper.
- Draw a box around your name.
- Circle this instruction.
- Pat the top of your head twice.
- Draw four smiley faces at the bottom of the paper.
- Clap three times.
- If you are left handed, put an X in the lower left-hand corner of this paper.
- If you are right handed put an X in the lower right-hand corner of this paper.
- Draw a circle around the X.
- If you are the first person to get this far on the test, call out “I am the first person to get to number 11!”
- Now that you have finished reading carefully, do only sentence number 2 then sit quietly and say nothing to anyone else.
To process this activity, ask these questions:
- Did more people follow the instructions or not?
- Was it funny when people didn’t follow the instructions? (Be sure that those who didn’t follow are not teased.)This was designed to trick you so it was easy to do the wrong thing.
- Have you ever tried to assemble something without reading the directions and been confused then look for the instructions and find out how easy something was?
- Do you think you will place more importance on instructions after this?